Original (English)

AUTHOR'S APOLOGY In these rushful days an apology is advisable, if not absolutely essential, from any man, save the one or two elect, who has the temerity to publish a volume of verse. These stray lines, such as they are, have come to me from time to time, I hardly know how or whence; certainly not of deliberate intention or of malice aforethought. More often than not they have come to the interruption of other, as it seemed to me, more important—and undoubtedly more profitable—work.